With the death of Pope Francis at the age of 88, the world’s attention now turns to who will replace him.
Predicting who will be chosen as the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics is notoriously fraught with difficulties. In theory, any baptised Catholic male could be made pope. In practice, however, the next pontiff will likely be drawn from the cardinals who will gather in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican for the secret papal election known as the conclave.
